


like waves towards the pebbled shore

by waterpots



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, Three Houses AU, You can't, and also they go through a weird communal emotional experience together, because i . like. love them or something, but like you...shouldn't need to know anything about the game to read, forcing two of my interests to intersect, im nayeon budding reason talent change my mind, jihyo mina and tzuyu are house leaders and heirs to the kingdoms, just like, no graphic violence at this point but it is a fire emblem au, y'know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21647734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterpots/pseuds/waterpots
Summary: going to the garreg mach officers academy with your childhood best friends is always nice. having an identity crisis while there, far less so.
Relationships: Hirai Momo/Minatozaki Sana, Im Nayeon/Yoo Jeongyeon
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Absolutely no particular fe3h knowledge is needed for this, beyond the names Hanneman and Manuela...everything else is either explained or not important (hopefully) so it doesn’t matter. I just needed professor names and I’m so far removed from most everything else kpop right now and can’t in good conscience have a professor Jiho. I just can’t. not yet anyway. so Manuela and hanneman are here. 
> 
> There’s no war but Jihyo, Mina, and Tzuyu are heirs to empires bc . idk. Hilda yolo’d me yeseterday so what else am I supposed to do lol.
> 
> Crests are completely pointless in this story bc I don’t rly care abt them and they only appear in like one scene just as part of an ornamental title. You don’t need to know what they are or how they work

Nayeon watches Jeongyeon and Jihyo from across the training grounds, engaged in their usual bizarre ritual that they claim is training. It involves taking turns absolutely decimating one of the straw dummies in whichever way they see fit, sometimes one at a time, sometimes as a team. This week they’ve chosen a close/long range combo attack, Jihyo rushing forward with a training axe while Jeongyeon shoots it with arrows from a distance.

Professor Hanneman’s words echo in her head, that she’s not getting enough out of her current house, that it’s so unbelievable she’s only studied swords up until this point, and that she’d do better in the Blue Lions under Hanneman, where they’re focusing far more effort and energy into studying magic.

“Just think about it,” he had said. And Nayeon had promised him she would, in the sort of way that implied she’d already made her mind up she wouldn’t, but she’d humor him.

It’s approaching sundown, and most people are starting to find their way out of the training grounds, to get dinner and start the homework for the next day. Not Jeongyeon and Jihyo, who have taken the increase in available practice dummies not as a sign that it’s time for them to pack in for the night, but as a sign that there are more fake enemies for them to defeat.

Nayeon sighed, because they’d been here since the very early lunch Jeongyeon and Jihyo had (it was Nayeon’s breakfast, because she’d gotten distracted in the morning and missed breakfast, not because she’d overslept like Jeongyeon claimed).

“Can we eat?” She called across the training grounds to them. They ignored her, or they were too involved in their training ritual to hear her, because Jeongyeon was shouting battle conditions to Jihyo, and Nayeon wonders how this isn’t unbecoming of a house leader. Nayeon stands, walks a few steps closer, but not too close, because she’s made that mistake before and gotten caught in Jeongyeon’s crossfire.

“The terrain is rocky,” Jeongyeon announces. “It’s going to buffer your accuracy because you might lose your footing.” Nayeon wonders if it’s a skill that Jihyo can adjust to the statement on the hard, flat, tamped down dirt.

“The bandits have magic that cloaks them from a distance,” Jihyo replies. “it’s hard to hit them.”

“Damn. Three hits to a kill,” Jeongyeon says, like it’s a childhood game with adjusting rules.

“I would  _ really _ like to go to the dining hall before it closes,” Nayeon calls out again, and again they ignore her. Nayeon kicks her foot against the ground, knowing full well she looks like a petulant child, but probably somehow more mature than her two companions dancing around straw.

Her foot bumps against a small stone, and although no bigger than a pebble, it suits Nayeon’s purpose well. She picks it up, hefts the weight of it in her hands (practically weightless), and in one motion, lobs the stone right at Jeongyeon. She gets the wind wrong, because the thing is so small and weightless and if it  _ had _ hit Jeongyeon she would have had no reason to complain, and it misses Jeong completely. But it gets her attention, which was the whole point, and the game is, for the moment, paused.

“What the hell?”

“What the hell is right! You were ignoring me.”

“We’re training!”

“I’m hungry!”

Jeongyeon scoffs. “Then go eat.”

“As heir to House Im, I demand a full half hour meal with my two closest friends at least once a week. It is Saturday, and we have not eaten together  _ once _ this week.”

“We just ate breakfast together.”

“it was a 10 minute meal and you spent the entire time writing an essay due on Monday.”

“It’s not my fault you chose to have remedial reason lessons during dinner.”

“They aren’t remedial!” Nayeon gasps, affronted. “And it’s not my fault you choose to skip meals to follow around the Knights of Seiros and bother them.”

“I don’t bother them!”

“How about we go and eat before the dining hall closes,” Jihyo announces, not really a question, and the two huff, and agree, and follow her to the dining hall, bickering the whole way, because Jeongyeon announced that, of all things, Nayeon started it. But she hadn’t, in fact, Jeongyeon had, because she was ignoring her. But in fact Nayeon had, because she convinced Duke Yoo that Jeongyeon had, somehow, been solely responsible for breaking all of the vases in the front hall of their manor when they were eight, the true cause of this whole fight.

“Because you  _ had _ broken all of them,” Nayeon retorts.

“Because you told me to!” Jihyo wonders at what age you’re supposed to bury the hatchet of childhood grievances.    


* * *

Being a house leader had its own share of extra responsibilities, all of which Tzuyu accepted with grace. It wasn’t enough to focus on her own studies and responsibilities, she also had to take care of those of those of the other members of the other members of her house. Leading the Golden Deer had its own difficulties, considering they were the house that boasted the highest number of non-noble members, and there was a pattern of some of the more snobbish nobles getting unduly upset at what they perceived to be the “poor manners of the commonfolk”. It was statistics that these issues more often than not stemmed with the Golden Deer, and it was Tzuyu’s job to quell those fires. She met all of her jobs at the Officers Academy with the grace and poise expected of her.

Except this one. Tzuyu wasn’t even sure what she was doing here, if this was even a job, standing silently with Park Jihyo on the docks of the pond while Mina, house leader of the Blue Lions, sat at the edge of the dock, shoes off and feet dipped in the water, fishing of all things. 

The silence was almost eerie, and Tzuyu wondered if it was difficult for Jihyo, who seemed to be rocking slightly back on her heels, posture erect in her usual Heir To The Empire sort of way. Silence and Jihyo tended to not go together, as far as Tzuyu could tell, although perhaps she didn’t know her well at all. 

For her own part, Tzuyu had never felt more awkward, standing behind Mina waiting for her to--finish? She honestly wasn’t sure what they were waiting for. Mina had been there long before Jihyo had grabbed Tzuyu (who was in the middle of a mid-afternoon snack, thanks) and brought the two of them over. 

Mina didn’t even know they were there, probably. Birds chirped overhead, there was the faint sound of someone singing from the greenhouse to keep them company, and Mina’s bait finally caught. It was a short battle, reeling in the catch, before a loach popped out of the water. It flopped around in the frantic sort of way fish did as they fought their last battle for their life, providing for the first time a challenge for Mina as she tried to grab it with the hand not holding the rod in place. She finally got it, slowly maneuvered the hook out of the fishes mouth, and dropped the fish back into the water. She reached into the small wicker basket beside her, to get more bait.

Jihyo cleared her throat, and Mina started, somehow only moving the water marginally, rather than splashing it around. She used a rag from her basket to wipe her feet dry, quickly slipping on a pair of shoes and standing up across from them.

“Myoui Mina, crown princess to the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, possessor of a major Crest of Blaiddyd. Impressively powerful magic abilities belied by a weak constitution, and house leader of the Blue Lions this year. Did I miss anything?”

“The fish?”

“And an avid fisher, I suppose.” Jihyo gave Tzuyu a confused look. “You’ve been here since before sunrise.”

“Sana wants to cook a dish with herring,” Mina says, finally speaking, answering Tzuyu’s question. Her voice is soft, and she looks meek, standing in front of them, nothing like the rumors that swarm about a ruthless tactician. 

“Ah.”

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” Jihyo says, and bows, measured. “My name is Park Jihyo, heir to the Adrestian Empire and leader of the Black Eagles house this year.” Tzuyu recalls something an older cousin had said about the Black Eagles being a tad...intense, and she figures now that he wasn’t lying.

“Chou Tzuyu,” she introduces herself, because Jihyo gives her a look that says she should. “My father’s head of the leading family of the Leicester Alliance, and I’m the house leader of the Golden Deer. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.” Because she’d only met Jihyo a good five minutes before they stood pensive watch over Mina. 

“Since we’re all three house leaders, I feel it would be best for us to meet regularly, to make sure the year runs as smoothly as possible. I have come to this conclusion due to an unfortunate incident involving comments certain Black Eagles made against members of the Golden Deer house, and I would like to see to it that this does not happen in the future. I have handled them already, but should this situation arise in the future I want you to know that you can always inform me and I will handle it promptly,” Jihyo said, looking at Tzuyu.

“That’s,” Tzuyu paused. “Good to know. But what comments?”

“Um.” Jihyo’s practiced speech was broken for a moment. “Certain class motivated remarks.”

“Oh.”

“Shouldn’t students tell you if things like that happen?”

“We already have a plan. Dahyun said to challenge them to a duel and then ‘kick their ass’ to solve problems like that.”

“You’re house leader. You endorse this protocol?”

“We don’t really run things like you guys do. I think if i tried to introduce ‘protocols’ they’d hang me from the rafters of the classroom by my feet.”

“I see.”

“I don’t know who Hanneman wants,” Mina spoke again, and the two turned their attention towards her. In the passing time, which Tzuyu honestly though Mina had spent putting together her things and leaving, Mina had, in fact, been listening. “From your class. Isn’t that what this is about?”

“No.”

“Right.”

“Considering that in the future we will have to engage in real politics with each other, the kind that will determine the fates of our counties, I think it wouldn’t hurt to acquaint ourselves now. That’s all.” Mina nodded, more tolerant of Jihyo’s lie than believing it. “If you’ll excuse me, I have matters to attend to. I hope we can meet again to discuss more next month.” Bowing once more, Jihyo takes her leave.

“What’s your mission for this month,” Tzuyu asked. Mina fixed her with a strange look.

“We have to deep clean the kitchens.” 

Tzuyu frowned. “We’re routing bandits harassing a nearby village. It seems like the other two houses have easier missions.”

“It’s not every day a fifteen year old gets named house leader,” Mina said. “You need to prove yourself.” she wanders off, fishing rod in hand, leaving Tzuyu standing on the docks as the sun slid lower in the sky.   


* * *

“Is it really that weird?” Momo asked, turning in Mina’s desk chair to look at the bed.

“Mina just can’t let anyone get too close,” Sana said. “They might try and take advantage of her.” She poked Mina’s leg, a gesture meant to indicate she was teasing from her position sprawled out on the bed, under Mina’s quilt. Mina, curled at the top of her own bed, knitting, frowned at the two of them.

“She gave a speech to us. It all sounded scripted.” 

“So do you?”

“There’s a difference between scripted and sounding measured, Momo,” Sana said.

“What are you doing?” Momo asked.

“Cocooning!” she announced, pulling the blanket around her like a burrito. “I’ll only come out in the spring and then I’ll be a beautiful butterfly!”

“You’re already beautiful,” Mina mumbled, like she didn’t realize she’d spoken.

“Awh,” Sana cooed. “But I’m not a butterfly.”

“Well I hope that while you’re cocooning you can still help me with this stupid paper.”

“Lucky you I haven’t finished my face yet.”

“Do you really have to cocoon on my bed?” 

“Sorry Mina. It’s the most comfortable bed in the world and I cannot be moved. You’ll have to sleep on the floor,” Sana said with a content smile.

“I’ll just sleep in your bed.”

“Wouldn’t Sana’s room be too messy?”

“My room is very clean, thank you.”

Momo wrinkled her nose. “That’s surprising.”

“I’m full of impressive depth.” Momo laughed. “Jihyo seems awfully reserved about something,” Sana said, returning to Mina’s point. “She never looks comfortable in conversation that isn’t with those two girls. Nayeon and, uh.”

“Jeongyeon?” Momo said.

“Yeah. I don’t think it’s fair to dislike Jihyo based on one interaction.”

“I don’t dislike her, I just don’t like when people talk to me like that.”

“Like you’re the crown princess?” Sana said, with a smile that’s far too knowing for someone who’s known Mina for all of a few weeks. It’s the first time Mina’s paused knitting since Momo and Sana came, at Sana’s behest, to spend time with their house leader and get to know her better. Mina frowns at the yarn in front of her.

“Maybe,” she said, and Sana leaves it at that, thankfully. 

“You have to catch a herring,” Sana announced, sitting up. 

“Why can’t she just buy Albinean herring,” Momo whined. “I want stew.”

“It’s not the same! It has to be freshly caught, you know that.” 

“That sounds like a rule you made up,” Momo whined. “They’re freshly caught by the fishmonger. It’s the same thing.”

“It isn’t. And you’d know if you’d written your essay.”

“My essay’s on Saint Cichol.”

“The patron saint of fishing.”

“That’s Cethleann,” Mina says, but Sana shushes her, and turns instead to helping Momo with her essay, still wrapped up in Mina’s quilt.   


* * *

It was a small job, because the Knights had taken out the bandits’ main fortress a week or so before, and they were just dealing with stragglers who didn’t know to run and join some other ranks. 

Tzuyu had dispatched herself along with a few other cavalry units to determine their exact numbers and layout. Archers, mostly, and a couple of axe wielding brutes. Not a single magic user in sight, a good sign. 

“What’s the plan?” Chaeyoung asked upon Tzuyu’s return.

“We kill them?”

“How, though?” Dahyun asked, and Tzuyu stared dumbly at her. Dahyun was fully clad in her armor, and it looked a tad big on her. “Charge? Careful defensive maneuvers? Ranged attacks?” 

“There are five archers and three guys with axes, so, uh,” they both looked at her expectantly. “We should kill them.”

“Well if it’s archers,” Dahyun said, sliding her helmet on. She looked more like a human shaped carving of metal than a persoon. “You should send me out first. This thing’s practically impenetrable.” She rapped her fist against her chestplate, like that actually showed something. “Have Chaeyoung and other ranged units come from the side and pick them off.”

“Is that really impenetrable,” Chaeyoung asked, tapping one of her shoulderplates. 

“Not entirely, but do you really think some crude bandit-made arrows can penetrate armor specially made for the Knights of Seiros? Fat chance!” She hefted her axe over one shoulder, and Chaeyoung grabbed her shield from the ground and handed it to her. “Meanwhile, you and the other mounted units should come in from the west over there.” Dahyun tried to point with her shield. Thankfully Tzuyu was following, because the gesture was very unclear. “You should be able to reach the other bandits without the archers noticing. You’ll be fast enough to take them out, I bet.” 

“Right. That’s a, uh, sound plan,” Tzuyu said with a nod. “We’ll do that.” 

“Gotcha,” Chaeyoung said. “We’ll meet you over there, then.” And Tzuyu rode off to inform the rest of their house.

The plan went off without a hitch, because Dahyun was right, the bandits weren’t exactly making arrows to pierce armor, and Dahyun’s shield blocked most of them, and those that did hit her armor just dented it. 

This was more Tzuyu’s element, riding along and picking off the bandits, one by one. The archers seemed woefully preoccupied trying to find the chink in Dahyun’s armor, leaving the three axe-weilding bandits with no backup. 

“Those bastards sent children after us,” one of the bandits roared, and the reply from his companion made Tzuyu almost take pleasure in running him through with her lance. 

A battle with no major casualties was always a good thing, their professor reported, and Tzuyu took it as a good thing, even though it was a simple mission and they weren’t supposed to run into any trouble. It was always better to not run into trouble than to run into it, if I could be so presumptuous as to say.

“Mission accomplished!” Dahyun announced, pulling off her helmet and sighing when they’d finally reconvened as a group. “I forgot how delicious fresh air tasted.” 

“You’re going to have a fun walk back,” Chaeyoung remarked, and Tzuyu frowned, hopping off her horse and walking over to the pair. Dahyun was grumbling, about how long they’d have to walk before they got a long enough break for her to take the stuff off, and how it’s easier to march with it on, because the last time she carried a full suit of armor in a bag she dropped pieces and wound up having no armor for her legs whatsoever.

“I looked like a chicken,” she said, and Chaeyoung laughed.

“Fancy riding there!” Dahyun said by way of greeting Tzuyu.

“You saw?”

“Seems smarter to keep an eye on everything happening, y’know?” Tzuyu nodded. “Anyhow, do you think you could strap this shield to my back, there’s a clasp back there you can attach it to. Makes marching easier.”

“Take your armor off,” Tzuyu said.

Chaeyoung gasped. “Scandalous.” She was ignored.

“It’s not fun to march sweaty like this, but even if I bundle it up as tightly as possible it’s too big of a pack for me to reasonably carry. I drag it behind me, the bag breaks, and suddenly pieces and pieces of heavy armor are spilling out into the abyss of the forest, never to be seen again. I can’t risk it.”

“My horse can carry it,” Tzuyu said.

“How are you getting back to the monastery?” Chaeyoung asked.

“I’ll walk?”

Chaeyoung stared at her. “I know I’m  _ from _ the Alliance, but I’ll never get over how not uppity the nobility there are.”

“Thanks?”

“I’m a mercenary, so I’ve been travelling a bunch across the continent. I’m only here to learn some proper fighting techniques and professional skills to take on more official jobs.”

“Lesson one,” Dahyun said, working at the straps on the armor covering her thighs. “Is to not call nobles uppity to their face.”

“Ah, shit.”

Tzuyu tries to offer Chaeyoung a reassuring smile in response, because she doesn’t take offence, because it’s kind of hard to. She’s met some of the other nobles before. 

In the end they get all of Dahyun’s armor bundled up properly, and stored safely on Tzuyu’s horse. All except Dahyun’s shield, which she slings onto her back, since the thing is practically larger than her, and announces she’s the Great Turtle of Creation, and her burden is to carry all of the world on her back. 

“Isn’t that a legend in Dagda?” Chaeyoung asks, and Dahyun laughs, and says she doesn’t know, and Tzuyu laughs, and says she does, and retells the whole story for them, leading her horse along back up to the monastery.

Tzuyu meets with the archbishop when they’re back, who commends them for their efforts, for their success, and for the professor’s ability to lead the class, even though their professor hadn’t really done much, because it had really been a test of Tzuyu more than anything. She feels like it’s worth it to mention that it was Dahyun’s plan, not hers, but her tongue stays glued to the roof or her mouth, because there’s not much room to say anything in front of the archbishop.

Dahyun and Chaeyoung are waiting for her outside, and Dahyun slings an arm over Tzuyu’s shoulder, despite the height difference, and announces they deserve a feast, that the rest of the class is already there, and they’re the elite crew tasked with making sure Tzuyu goes and eats with them. She lets them.

And they feast, and have fun and everyone laughs like they didn’t just kill people, like it’s not a somber experience to have taken lives, however pitiful those lives may have been. 

Dahyun leaves first, announcing that she has to train, has to make sure to bulk up her muscles to grow into the armor, hand-me-downs from her brother who left to become a knight, even though she confided in Chaeyoung and Tzuyu on the march home she was sure she wasn’t growing any bigger, and the armor would always just be a tad wrong on her, and maybe she should get some that fits her someday. 

Tzuyu jumps at the opportunity, says she’ll escort Dahyun out, that she needs to train or study on her own anyway, or at the very least help Dahyun get her armor from the stables to her room, and the two exit the dining hall into the twilight, light discoloring everything oranges and yellows. 

“Well done today.” Tzuyu turns quickly at the voice, as does Dahyun, who nearly trips over her own feet doing it. It’s Mina, standing outside with Jihyo, and Tzuyu isn’t sure what to make of their being here, what exactly this conversation is about, whatever one they were having before the two stepped outside.

“Thank you.”

“What was it like,” Jihyo asks. “Although I’m sure Mina already knows.” The smile Mina gives her is not guilty, not friendly, not anything Tzuyu can read. 

“Divide and conquer,” Mina says. “There weren’t many bandits. Mounted units took out the slower ones while armored units drew the archers’ fire.”

“That’s correct,” Tzuyu says.

“I sent students to observe.” 

“Ah.” Tzuyu nods.

“It was a good strategy,” Jihyo says. “I did not send students to spy on you.”

“It’s not spying.”

“It’s a gray area. But a good strategy, regardless.”

“Thank you. Actually the idea was all D-” 

“Tzuyu’s really good at leading us,” Dahyun announces. “We wouldn’t have been able to win without her plan.” Tzuyu frowns at her, and the grin Dahyun gives her is confusing. Jihyo’s looking at her expectantly, and Mina’s stare is appraising, and Tzuyu feels uncomfortable under the weight.

“We all worked hard,” she says. “It was a house-wide effort.”

Mina hums. “You might actually be a challenge at the battle of Eagle and Lion.” 

“Yeah! We’re gonna kick your guys’ asses!” Dahyun says, and Tzuyu wants to tell her that the house leaders aren’t really the ideal audience for a bought of lighthearted trash talking. 

“Right,” Jihyo says, and Mina’s eyes flick between the three of them.

“I have to go,” she says.

“We weren’t done with our conversation,” Jihyo says.

“We’ll finish it later,” and Mina disappears in the direction of the dorms. 

“House leader meetings seem really fun,” Dahyun remarks, and Jihyo frowns at her. “We have to go to the stables to get my armor.”

“I’ll leave you to that.” 

Dahyun insists, when they make it over to the stables, that she carries all of the armor, and that Tzuyu not carry any of it, because “any self respecting knight can carry the weight they wear in battle,” but Tzuyu still carries the axe and shield, and finds herself slowly picking up pieces that fall out of Dahyun’s bag, because she does drag it behind herself, and the sack does break and the pieces do spill out, slowly, ony by one. 

“Don’t tell people the plan was my idea,” Dahyun says, when they’ve reached the training ground, and finally dropped all the armor and let it pile messily in the dirt. “It doesn’t look good for you.”

“But it  _ was _ your idea.”

“Yeah but, y’know, a noble taking a plan from a commoner, all that jazz.”

“I don’t care about that?”

“You don’t, and I don’t, and the Alliance doesn’t, because we recognize the value of hard work and don’t ascribe to classist notions like some other countries, but we aren’t living in a beautiful Alliance bubble, y’know?”

“I guess. But still, I don’t like taking your idea without credit.” 

“I don’t mind it. Plus, we don’t need other houses making comments. I can only challenge so many people to duels before facing someone who’s actually stronger than me. Then I’m screwed.” It sounds like there’s more to it, but Tzuyu leaves it where it is. Decides it’s best not to press her new friend to reveal more than she’s comfortable revealing.

“Don’t practice too late,” is the last thing Tzuyu says to Dahyun before she leaves, and Dahyun waves her hands like she’s totally listening, even though Tzuyu knows she’ll probably be there well past midnight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a lot of in-house foundational dynamics. so if it wasn't clear  
> black eagles--jihyo, jeongyeon, nayeon  
> blue lions--mina, sana, momo  
> golden deer--tzuyu, chaeyoung, dahyun
> 
> the beagles are childhood friends, gd and bl didn't know each other before coming to the officer's academy. yeah. if anything is unclear let me know i feel like i made it all pretty sensical but what do i know i'm drowning in 3h right now and i'm illiterate. i'm @snowsets on twitter although i don't use that account much, if ya wanted to know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear this fic works like this
> 
> Mina and jihyo: *turmoil*  
> Tzuyu, normal: what the fuck???

“I want fruit!” Jeongyeon announces, marching into Nayeon’s room without so much as a single rap upon her door. Not a single indication she was coming in until she was already inside.

“I could have been changing!” Nayeon is sitting on the bed, trying to make a more logical order out of several sheets of paper sprawled out in front of her. It’s a Saturday, a free day.

“You’re not,” Jeongyeon says, after making a particularly emphatic retching noise. “And I want fruit.”

“There’s fruit in the dining hall.” Jeongyeon is dressed down for the weekend, and the shirt she’s wearing looks scratchy and uncomfortable, and Nayeon wonders where she got it, because Duke Yoo and his wife have always been rather particular about clothing.

“Not that fruit. Different fruit. Special fruit. The kind of fruit you can only get at the Dagdan market in town.”

“You can go and get it.” Jeongyeon stares at her. “What?”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Currently? No. In a few minutes? Also no. I’m studying something, you can go on your own. I promise you won’t die without my divine presence to accompany you for an hour.”

“Nayeon,” Jeongyeon says with a sigh, grabbing Nayeon’s desk chair and sliding it over towards the bed, sitting on it backwards and hands folded on top, chin resting on them. “I have to take you on a walk at least twice a day or else you get stir crazy from lack of exercise and fresh air.”

“The window’s open.”

“You’re like a dog. That’s just not gonna cut it. Plus I want to spend some quality time with my dear personal friend I’ve known since childhood.” Nayeon makes a face.

“Is Jihyo finally sick of you?”

“Jihyo’s in Enbarr,” Jeongyeon says, and just like that the joke is broken.

“Seriously? Again?”

“You know how the Prime Minister is.” Nayeon sighs, rubs her eyes with the palms of her hand. It’s the third time since they arrived last month that Jihyo’s been called back to the capital. Always suddenly, always without warning, and always with the same air of urgency. “I only know because I was there when she got the summons.”

“Can’t we just hire the Knights of Seiros to kill him?”

“I think that’s illegal.”

“It’s not an act of war against another country.”

“I don’t think making the Empire and Church go to war would be a smart decision.”

“You won’t know unless you try.” Jeongyeon rolls her eyes. “Get out of my room. I need to get ready to be seen in public.”

“Don’t want people to know you’re actually a swamp witch, huh?” Jeongyeon says. Nayeon grabs the nearest book to her, a Primer on Transmutation, and lobs it at Jeongyeon, who’s already making a dash for the door. 

It desperately needs to be autumn soon, and cooler, because it’s hell to walk into town, and autumn also means Nayeon’s birthday, always an added perk of the change in weather. The day Jihyo and Jeongyeon are obligated by law to be kind to Nayeon--no. The day they are obligated to worship her. Like she deserves. Required to treat her with the utmost genuine respect, the kind they disregarded every other day, cruelly, like cruel friends who engage in cruel activities. Cruelly. 

“It’s too hot out,” Nayeon announces.

“It’s not that bad,” Jeongyeon says, like she hasn’t been wiping sweat from her forehead with a rag the entire walk. 

“It’s abysmal. If this fruit isn’t absolutely divine you have to carry me back to the monastery.” Jeongyeon rolls her eyes. 

“I hate you.”

“You love me,” Nayeon says.

“Only because nobody else will.”

They stop at one of the vendors, Jeongyeon carefully examining the fruit to determine which is most ripe and perfect for eating, or something. Nayeon isn’t really paying attention, because she trusts Jeongyeon’s fruit-selecting abilities, and as it is, she's too busy engaging in the very important activity of glaring at the sun so it stops being so bright. It’s not working, because the sun doesn’t fall to such foolhardy things as peer-pressure.

“All set,” Jeongyeon says, finally stepping away from the merchant, and Nayeon immediately reaches a hand out for Jeongyeon to place a fruit into. She obliges.

“Gross,” Nayeon says.

“I gave you the best one I bought.”

“Yeah, but it’s got your germs all over it,” Nayeon says, and begins rubbing it against her shirt.

“Insufferable.”

“I’m magnanimous.” Jeongyeon snorts. “What? In awe of my outstanding vernacular?”

“All this magic training has gone to your head,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Just because you’re reading stupid specialized literature, you think you’re  _ so _ great.”

“No more than it should. I’ll remember you when I’m the most powerful witch in the world, I promise.” 

“You better. You’re never getting rid of me.”

“We're going to be stuck together forever, aren’t we?" Nayeon says.

"Of course! Emperor Jihyo. And me, her stalwart knight. And you! Our beloved court jester!" 

"Yoo Jeongyeon!" Nayeon growls, and lunges at Jeongyeon, just barely missing her. Jeongyeon’s grinning in that stupid way she always seems to when she teases Nayeon, and stays just out of reach, just slightly faster than her, so Nayeon cheats. It’s the smallest gust of wind, and if you asked Nayeon, it might have just been the natural wind on the very still, very hot day that tripped Jeongyeon forward and straight into the fountain at the town’s center. 

"Cheater!" Jeongyeon's tone is accusatory, standing up and wringing out her shirt. Nayeon, in an effort to inspire good feelings and help bury the hatchet, was doubled over in laughter. "You don’t see me chasing you around with my horse!" 

"You absolutely have before!" 

"Yeah, well." Jeongyeon stepped out of the fountain, sopping water all over the cobblestone beneath them. "I’m wet."

"I didn’t notice."

"Dastard."

Nayeon gasped. "Rude." Jeongyeon stuck her tongue out. "Do you want me to dry you off?"

"You’re going to light me on fire now too?" Jeongyeon took a large step back, frowning. "Isn’t this enough?"

"No you-" Nayeon grabbed Jeongyeon, pulling her arm closer, lighting a flame in her hand, small and controlled, but hot enough to dry out the sleeve of Jeongyeon's shirt. 

"Oh."

"Yeah." They stood in silence, Nayeon slowly drying off as much of Jeongyeon as she reasonably could, Jeongyeon watching.

"You’re actually really good at this, huh."

"What?"

"Magic." 

Nayeon scoffed. "Obviously. Why do you think I’m studying it?"

"I don’t know," Jeongyeon said. "I just kind of thought, yknow, considering," she paused. "I dunno." 

"Me either," Nayeon said, letting go of her sleeve. "Done."

"If not for my hair, nobody would even know how you’ve wronged me."

"It just looks like you’ve been swimming."

"Yes well I’m going to announce to everyone in the monastery that you pushed me into the fountain, so."

"The wind did it!" 

"Who's going to believe that?"

* * *

It was hot at Garreg Mach. Hotter than Fhirdiad, the Kingdom capital, or anywhere else in the Kingdom for that matter. Plus its summer, and warm as hell. Warmer than it ever gets in the Kingdom. Dahyun can’t get a read for the girl wandering around the monastery in their full uniform, not the lighter summer uniform, with a throw slung over her shoulders to provide extra warmth. 

Her name is Sana, and all information Dahyun has uncovered so far has been completely useless. She’s from the Kingdom, her family aren’t nobility, and she devotes most of her time to matters of faith. 

_ And she’s cold _ , although that was field research, achieved from hours of carefully observing Sana when they were both sent out to pull weeds in the monastery yard. And as they both stoop over the weeds in the yard and wipe their brows, Dahyun wonders how Sana doesn’t have heatstroke yet. 

“I’m not hot,” Sana says. Dahyun spoke out loud, hadn’t realized it, has been mostly engaging in silent weed pulling with this girl up until now. Hadn’t really planned on that changing anytime soon. “I’m just always cold.”

“Must be unfortunate, living in the Kingdom.”

“We have warmer clothes. And warmer houses. And warmer fires.”

“Warmer fires?”

“We have the warmest fires on the continent. Possibly the world.”

Dahyun squints. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Can you prove it?”

“I guess not.” Sana grins, and Dahyun laughs, well intentioned and friendly. “Is there a secret to warmer fires?” 

“There is, but I don’t know if you’re trustworthy. We can’t go spilling important secrets like that to Leicester nobility.”

“I assure you,” Dahyun says, standing up and placing a hand over her chest, a gesture of mock chivalry. Presents Sana with a dramatic bow. “My family runs a small tavern located on the border between the Leicester Alliance and the Adrestian Empire. I have never met nobility before coming here, and I seek only to incorporate hotter fires into my family’s humble business.” 

“Well, in that case,” Sana says. “I can tell you.” She gestures for Dahyun to crouch down next to her, eyeing around the yard to see if they have any eavesdroppers. She leans closer, dropping her voice down to a whisper. “The secret is love.”

“Love?”

“Yes. And tenderness.” 

“You’re just messing with me!” Dahyun exclaims, falling back so she’s sitting more comfortably. 

“I don’t know if I can trust you yet!” Sana says with a teasing grin, and Dahyun huffs. “You could be lying. Or a spy.”

“How can I prove myself?”

Sana hums, crossing her arms, deep in thought. “You claim to be from a restaurant family, right?”

“I am! I’ve been working in the kitchens since I was a kid,” Dahyun says, grinning.

“You must be a pretty good cook, then.”

“The best!”

“Let’s start there. You cook me a delicious meal that only the heir to a culinary empire could come up with, and maybe I will start to believe you.”

“It’s just one tavern in a small border village, not an empire.”

“A feast! I demand no less to prove your commoner-hood and non-spyness.”

“All right, all right. I’ll do it. You’ve got yourself a deal. But I better be able to make the hottest fires in the world after I’ve proven myself to you.”

* * *

"I’m here on Hanneman's behest," Momo announces, dropping herself into the seat across from Nayeon at the library. Nayeon, for her part, desperately wants to make Momo disappear. Or herself. Or maybe just ignore Momo until she leaves, but she knows the hell received as punishment for the non-consensual warping of another living being is more trouble than it’s worth. More trouble than sitting through this conversation.

"You’re lucky I’m alone right now."

"He said you'd be more personable on your own, and I figured it's better not to be in front of another house leader as I ask someone to switch out of her house." Nayeon shushes Momo, to the best of her ability, quickly scanning the library to see if anybody was eavesdropping. They’re in the clear. 

"Don’t say that too loudly," Nayeon says. "Or too directly."

"I’m gonna guess it’s not looking good."

"It’s kind of him to offer, but I’ve still got a lot to learn in my current class. Professor Manuela also focuses on magic, you know." 

"Yeah but she teaches faith based magic, which I’ve heard you’re terrible at."

"I know enough to warp you out of the monastery."

"And suffer three months cleaning the training grounds  _ and _ help the kitchen dispose of food waste for a month. Why would you  _ do _ that?"

"Why do you  _ know _ that?" 

Momo shrugs. "Hanneman made us review all the rules at the beginning of the month. We had a whole exam making sure we knew them all."

"Why?"

"From what I’ve heard, Mina's concept of rules can be a bit...selective." Nayeon quirks an eyebrow, but Momo just shrugs. “It’s all just rumors.”

“She doesn’t seem like the type,” Nayeon remarks. “Although she has sent a few students from your house to spy on us before. And the Golden Deer as well.” 

“An enigma wrapped in a mystery, that one. I think I’ve only heard her talk because Sana’s so persistent about making sure she eats lunch with other people,” Momo says. 

“It’s funny you know,” Nayeon says. “I feel like I had never really heard of her before coming here. Truthfully I always though, and well, maybe I just don’t keep up with the Kingdom that well, but I always thought the king had a son.” 

“I don’t know the specifics,” Momo says with a shrug. “I just know she’s the heir now, and that we had to learn a bunch of rules, because apparently she’s never lost a game of chess and that was said with the sort of gravity that implies that something _ happened _ .” 

“That’s a cruel and unusual punishment for something that isn’t your fault.”

“Thank you. Finally someone understands,” Momo says. “Although maybe it is my job or something.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. My dad told me before I left that the Hirai family has always provided support to the royal family, and that it’s my sworn duty to protect them. I think keeping Mina out of trouble counts for that.” 

“But you don’t know her?”

“I don’t. I mean, it’s technically my sister’s job to support the royal family. She’ll inherit the family title. I think my dad just hopes I’ll get an in to join the royal guard or something.”

“Why?”

Momo shrugs. “Clout? Plus, I think I was supposed to meet her when we were kids, but my parents never let me go to formal events because I refused to eat a ‘humane’ amount of appetizers.”

“As you shouldn’t.”

“As I shouldn’t! Thank you.” 

“So you’re training to be a knight?”

“Yeah. I’ve got some pretty big military ambitions on my own, but my dad’s are like ‘so beloved and renowned that when Mina inevitably dies without an heir the throne is passed on to me’ big.” 

“That’s, uh.”

“To be fair it’s all the leading nobles in the Kingdom have been talking about for the past month.”

“She’s seventeen.”

“Yeah, it’s not great. At all,” Momo says with a shrug. “But she doesn’t seem to care about much of anything at all, so I don’t think it bothers her. But, regardless of the exciting politics of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, I’ll make sure to tell Hanneman it’s a no-go.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for validating my appetizer eating habits.”

“Momo,” Nayeon says, placing a comforting hand on Momo’s forearm. “If not for the fact that I grew up in the Empire, I would have been right there with you, blasting my way through all the single-bite cheese and cracker plates I could find.”

“No, through all the single-bite cheese and cracker plates  _ we _ could find,” Momo says, and her voice cracks, and Nayeon can’t tell if she’s that good at acting, or if she’s genuinely about to cry.

“Do you want to get lunch? I haven’t had eaten since this morning.”

Momo looks at her, for a second like she’s piecing something together about Nayeon that Nayeon doesn’t want to think about, but just as soon it’s gone, and Momo grins. And agrees. And eats about five plates more than Nayeon and comments on how much less her and Sana and Mina and every other person who uses magic eats, and how the only person she’s seen to match pace with her is Jeongyeon, or Dahyun, because they’re the only two who train the way she does, as much as she does.

* * *

Chaeyoung insisted they ride together, which is not correct, and not how they’re supposed to do the sky watch, but when Tzuyu saw how Chaeyoung tried to ride a horse, or sit on a pegasus, she decided it was perhaps for the best if, in this situation, they disregarded the rules and did what was safer for both the animals and Chaeyoung. 

“It’s a death beast,” Chaeyoung announces, taking Tzuyu’s hand and using her to help pull herself onto the back of the pegasus. “This is a harbinger of destruction. When you die, this is the beast Death rides down on to pull you into the afterlife.”

“The pegasus represents purity,” Tzuyu remarks, and adjusts her hands on the reigns. 

“The purity of death.” The professor had given Tzuyu a primer on flying. It’s a lot like riding a horse, except taking off and landing, and the fact that when you fall off a horse you’re likely to break your arm, but when you fall off a pegasus you’re likely to break your neck. And die. No pressure, good luck, don’t forget to have fun. Those had been the last remarks the professor had given her. 

“You’ve done this before, right?” Chaeyoung asks, when she’s properly situated on the back of the pegasus, with a vice grip around Tzuyu’s stomach. She didn’t really expect Chaeyoung to be that strong, and she’s a little worried about her breathing. 

“Rode?”

“A pegasus. Rode a pegasus.”

“...Yep!” Tzuyu says, and it’s probably only fear that causes Chaeyoung to believe her. She’s pushing her head into the Tzuyu’s back, so she doesn’t have to see anything. They haven’t even moved yet.

The beginning is easy, because it’s like riding a horse, and Tzuyu has good luck with animals, it seems, because the pegasus takes to her well and listens. It’s just picking up speed, and then the pegasus, who probably hates being on the ground because if you had wings you’d probably also fly everywhere, unfolds said wings and pulls them into the air. 

This step is more uncomfortable than hard, their professor had remarked, because you have to get used to the incline up, and the feeling of the way a pegasus works, the flapping of wings and the vague lurching that goes along with it. Chaeyoung lets out a yelp when they first lift off the ground, tightening her grip around Tzuyu’s stomach, if that was even possible. Tzuyu lets out a grunt in response, and Chaeyoung mumbles an apology, but doesn’t loosen her grip. 

Once they’re at the proper altitude, it’s just like riding a horse again. The pegasus does most of the work, because it’s specially trained by the Knights to take on new fliers, and Tzuyu just helps steer it around the monastery grounds. It’s silent up in the sky, except the sound of wind around them, but even that isn’t so bad.

“Are you okay?” Tzuyu asks, turning her head slightly, and Chaeyoung grunts in response.

“As well as I can be,” she says.

“You didn’t seem like the type to be afraid of this,” Tzuyu remarks.

“When I was a kid I got run over by one,” Chaeyoung says. “A merc couldn’t control their spooked pegasus and barrelled into me. I broke my arm.” 

“But this isn’t so bad, right?”

“No,” Chaeyoung mumbles after a moment, still refusing to move her head from pressed into Tzuyu’s back. 

“Would you have felt more comfortable riding a wyvern?”

“The pegasus’ brooding reptile cousin? Harbinger of pestilence?”

“I guess not.” They circle above the grounds for an hour, the position more busy work than anything, considering Knights are also part of the sky watch. It’s something to do, and probably gets them some flying experience, and probably also means that somebody in the Knights can take a break.

Flying is easy, at least to Tzuyu, and the whole thing has a certain amount of added freedom. Riding was freeing, too, but she’d done a lot of that at home, under the watchful eye of family and teachers, on closed courses designed specifically to teach her to ride. This was an unencumbered freedom, the kind she’d experienced the first time she’d gone out riding on her own, away from the courses created to teach her. She’d fallen off her horse and had to make her way to the nearest village to get her leg checked out, accidentally sprained it with the way she fell down, and had to hear an earful of worry from her parents when she’d gotten back. She’d felt alive. 

“You’re good at this,” Chaeyoung says, and Tzuyu can feel her unpress her head just a little, tilt it to the side, to look out at the view. 

“Thanks. I’ve never done this before.”

“What?”

“Flown.”

“But you said-”

“I lied.” 

“If we weren’t on this death beast right now I think I’d kill you.”

“You’ve been slowly crushing me since you got behind me, so I think we’re even.” 

Chaeyoung is silent, staring out at the monastery. “The pond almost looks beautiful from this distance.”

“Right? Everything looks nicer up here.” 

“Thanks,” she says.

“We could still die on the way down,” Tzuyu says. “Save your thanks for later.” And Chaeyoung whines, and adjusts her grip around Tzuyu’s waist. Not tighter, but more secure.

* * *

Sana has a habit of making house affairs whole school affairs. Dahyun discovers that about her, because Momo and Sana corner her one day while she’s sitting in the dining hall and trying to master the art of zen. Of no thoughts, head empty. 

Mina is missing, somehow, some way. The house leader of the Blue Lions, who Dahyun’s only seen a handful of times, only in passing. 

“We were supposed to be meeting with Hanneman to talk about the mock battle at the end of the month.”

“I saw her this morning. Before training,” Momo says. “She just looked like she was going to the library.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“I just told her I’d see her at the meeting.” Dahyun looks down at the sandwich she was supposed to be eating. 

“What did she say back?”

“I…don’t remember?”

“You don’t remember?”

“It was something, like, super normal! I don’t know. I didn’t remember it as it was happening. It was just a boring conversation.” 

“Yeah, and now she’s  _ missing _ .”

“She has to be around here  _ somewhere _ ,” Dahyun says, cutting into their conversation. “Are the Knights looking for her?”

Momo shakes her head. “Hanneman is furious. Wanted to tell everyone immediately, but even if Mina was kidnapped, which she’s definitely not,” Sana glares at Momo, like they’ve been arguing over this. “She probably wouldn’t be thrilled about the search party. We’re trying to keep this as lowkey as possible.” By telling every student in the monastery, it seems.

“The skywatch are keeping an eye out for her, and Tzuyu took some other students and are checking outside the monastery on horseback. We tried to get Jihyo to pull the Black Eagles in, but she’s back at the capital for some reason.”

“Huh.”

“Jeongyeon’s acting as house leader in her place, so they’re keeping an eye out, at least.” 

“What do you need me to do?” Dahyun asks.

“We’re trying to find people who have seen her today,” Sana says. “So far it’s only been Momo.”

“And only before daybreak.”

“Got it,” Dahyun said, standing up, completely forgetting about her poor sandwich. “I’ll get Chaeyoung and we’ll do some sleuthing.”

“Thank you,” Momo says.

“Of course. We’ll find her.”

* * *

It turns into a whole monastery affair, the whole student body covertly mobilized to find one student. Tzuyu is the one who locates her, finally, riding around outside the monastery. She’s at a lake, a short distance west. It’s far enough that she would have had to leave first thing in the morning, considering she hadn’t ridden over, but walked. 

She’s fishing. Again.

“The whole monastery is looking for you,” Tzuyu says, and Mina ignores her, or doesn’t hear her, or doesn’t have anything to say. “Nobody knew where you were.”

“You know,” Mina says, and it’s just flippant enough that Tzuyu almost gets mad.

“Now I do,” Tzuyu says, and moves to sit beside Mina, because she’s not entirely sure what to do, and it seems right. 

“What’s with you and fishing?” Tzuyu asks, after a moment.

“I can’t catch a herring,” Mina says. “I used to go fishing all the time, and now I can’t catch a herring.” 

“Fishing is mostly just luck,” Tzuyu says, and Mina hums. “We should head back.” 

“Hanneman’s just going to yell at me.” 

“You did disappear without warning.” 

“Do I have to go?”

“Yeah.”

“Can’t you just tell everyone you didn’t find me?” 

“And you’ll do what?”

“I’ve curried favors from some Brigid merchants. I’ll go there and start a new life. Fishing is a big export.”

“No.” 

“I would have made sure the Blue Lions throw the Battle of Eagle and Lion on your behalf, but fine.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“I wouldn’t have.” 

“We don’t have to leave just yet, though,” Tzuyu says. “We should at some point though. Need to get back before sundown.”

“Right.”

“You know,” Tzuyu says, and the part of her brain that recalls childhood etiquette lessons is ringing warning bells, trying to get her to stop talking. “From what I had heard with the prince and all, I thought you would never leave your room, yet you always seem to be anywhere but.” Mina says nothing. “Although, I suppose this is also a common way to cope.”

“There’s no reason to cope,” Mina says, and she stands up. “Let’s go back.” 

“Huh?” Tzuyu looks out at her cast line. “But you’re fishing.”

“I’m done,” Mina says, and for good measure, to prove her point, she chucks the fishing rod out into the water, a good few feet deep into the water, just far enough they can’t reach it without getting very wet, something Tzuyu is pretty sure she didn’t mean to do, given how she stares at the place it had landed, as if willing it to come out of the water. But it doesn’t, because fishing rods are not sentient, and don’t bend a knee to royal houses, even if they were. It’s almost comical to Tzuyu. Almost.

“Lets go.” Mina says, finally, looking away.

“Right.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post notes:-  
> -fire emblem's use of the word dastard is frequent and hilarious and i love it  
> -lorenz says clout so canonically this is a world in the FEFU (fire emblem fodlan universe)  
> -i don't think the word no-go makes sense, since i think it's a post world war linguistic innovation, but what do i know  
> -i'mmmmm gonna reread tomorrow but momo's character has been so variable throughout this so if she says smth blatantly contradictory let me know bc i finally made a decision on what she's Up To
> 
> -remember when i said five chapters?? yeah these things spiral. anyway i'm a little drungo. thanks so much if you've read this !!! it means the world to me :-)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's the mock battle, it's mocking. and real. or fake. uh. mock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have excuses for how i managed to trade a two week break into a two month break but they're all what they are. i can't promise i'll be super on time on things i just started a new job and am just getting into the flow of this new work schedule and all that. mmm i think that's all :]

Jihyo returns to Garreg Mach. She’s quieter, more inside herself. Common practice when she’s called to the capital, but never a good sign. It also makes this mock battle strategy meeting  _ really _ difficult.

“If we can fortify here,” Jeongyeon points. “I think we’ll have a better shot at taking down the other two houses. What do you think?”

“Mmhmm.” They’re set up in the Black Eagles classroom, trying to strategize on the map Jeongyeon’s tacked up to the board. Jihyo is sitting at the chair normally reserved for Professor Manuela. They’re supposed to be strategizing, together, but Jihyo’s not really staring at the map, more just staring in general, because looking is one of those things you have to do all day all the time, even if you don’t want to. Even if you close your eyes, you are still looking at something.

“And then I figure we all stand on our hands, and spin around like tops, in the middle of the battlefield, just like that.”

“Sounds good.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jeongyeon asks, and Jihyo blinks up at her, as if she didn’t realize Jeongyeon was there, towering over her and trying to decide where to put the green tack that denotes cavalry onto the map.

“No,” Jihyo says, because she doesn’t. Because they’ve talked about it, and talked about it, and exhausted just about the whole topic with all the talking about it they’ve done.

“Then where should we put this?”

“Corner.”

“Which?”

“Yeah.”

Jeongyeon sighs, sticks the pin in along the tacking edge of the map, and walks to the desk, resting against it. “What happened?”

“Nothing new. They needed to draw more blood.”

Jeongyeon frowns. “The whole point of you coming here was to be away from all that,” she gestures vaguely. “Garbage.”

“Until he’s proven his point, I’m stuck going back.”

“How did it go?”

“I’ve had the same blood I’ve had since I was born.”

“See, I think that’s the problem,” Jeongyeon says. “Most people make new blood every day.” The look Jihyo gives her is unamused. “You ought to just kill him one of these days.”

“Yoo Jeongyeon, you are proposing treason.”

“It’s not treason if the Emperor of the Adrestian Empire does it.”

“I’m not the Emperor.”

“Yet.” Jihyo’s look melts into a small smile.

“Yet,” she echoes.

* * *

Dahyun had insisted upon a full team meeting to prepare their strategy for the mock battle. Everyone all clamored into the dining hall after hours, with a board they had to drag all the way from the classroom positioned near the front, map tacked along. They’d finally gotten around to starting, after Dahyun and one of the older students insisted upon the unarguable benefits of hot chocolate on the thinking process. Worse yet, the professor nodded along, forced them to wait until every student had been handed a mug of steaming liquid gold and a bowl of whipped cream was being passed along to be dolloped in as one pleased.

“We’re down here,” the professor points to a part of the map, draws a circle with their finger. “To start.” They look to the class, huddled around the board, the professor and Tzuyu flanking it on either side. “What do you think?”

“We should win!” A student announces, and the room dissolves into chaos.

The professor seems unphased, turns to Tzuyu, says with a gravity unbefitting of a meeting like this, “it was my own hubris.”

“They’re right,” Tzuyu acknowledges. The professor nods, takes a long sip of their hot chocolate, gains a whipped cream moustache for their time.

“But how?” The chaos calms down, of its own accord, because the Golden Deer may cause a ruckus, but they come to win, or try, or plan, and because if they’re good maybe they’ll get more hot chocolate. Entropy, but in opposite (whatever that may be).

“We don’t spend a lot of time on large scale tactics like this,” Tzuyu says. “We’re at a disadvantage against the Black Eagles, who focus a lot of time into learning common war strategies used by the Empire.”

“And the Blue Lions,” the professor says. “Hanneman is ruthless,” there’s a far off look in their eyes that says more than Tzuyu would like it to.

“The Beagles use the same strategy every year,” Dahyun says.

“Beagles?”

“Black Eagles, duh. Two unified fronts that march, one on each enemy. It’s not the greatest strategy, but they’re the strongest in terms of uniformity and general army, uh, energy. Their goal is to overpower us both at once.”

“Most Empire students usually join the military until they inherit whatever title they’re destined for,” another student pipes up.

“Exactly,” Dahyun says. “They use the Officer’s Academy as military prep.”

“That’s exactly what the Officer’s Academy is,” Chaeyoung mumbles.

“The Blue Lions haven’t even started strategizing yet,” another student pipes up, from the back of the room. “I’m friends with some of them.” By way of explanation for this intel.

The professor frowns, probably, if that’s what that quirk of the mouth is. “We’re usually the last ones to start planning.”

“Her highness isn’t really  _ into it _ ,” Dahyun says, with a shrug. “So we just have to prepare a strategy to beat the Beagles, really.”

“The worst thing we could do is try and defeat the Black Eagles head on,” Tzuyu says. “A lot of their students focus on heavy armor attack and defense maneuvers, and we’re kind of miscellaneous.” Unlike their counterparts in the Empire and Alliance, the Golden Deer spent very little time on war maneuvers, on strategy that extended beyond the individual. It was, perhaps, a shortcoming, now that Tzuyu was thinking of it. But the Alliance doesn’t have a military, just small disparate armed forces that serve a specific territory or house.

“We should meet their order with disorder,” Dahyun says, jumping up to stand at the map. She takes a pencil from Tzuyu’s hand, using it to mark lightly, only really for the professor and Tzuyu to see. “We can assume the Beagles are going to run like this,” she draws two uniform lines to represent them, one pointed to the Blue Lions camp, one to the Golden Deer.

“The Blue Lions are still a mystery.”

“Right,” Dahyun nods, draws a circle roughly where the Blue Lions will be. “If we do the same thing as the Beagles, they’ll overpower us. We should split into small groups,” she draws a collection of small circles around the Golden Deer camp. “And all do different things.” Each circle gets a line, drawn seemingly haphazardly. “Our best chance of beating them is breaking their ranks, forcing them to think outside of their strategies.”

The professor looks at the map appraisingly, then at Tzuyu. “What will we do about the Blue Lions after?” They ask.

“The Black Eagles front will likely have thinned both of their numbers some,” Tzuyu says. “So we could regroup and plan an attack after.”

Dahyun nods, Tzuyu followed her perfectly.

“I’ll assign small groups in the morning,” the professor remarks, to the class. “You’ll have a few days to plan, then we can reconvene and ensure we’re all doing different things.” The professor leaves without dismissing them, because they tend to forget things like that.

“Are we done, then?” Chaeyoung asks, glancing down at her mug. “I’m not done with my hot chocolate.”

“I want more!” Another student announces from the back of the room. They all look to Tzuyu, omnipotent leader. Fearless leader. Another-word-here leader.

“We have this room as long as we’re preparing for the mock battle,” Tzuyu says.

There’s a groan from someone. “Cop.”

“I think bonding over another cup of hot chocolate and occasionally nodding at the map like we’re doing something with it is an important part of preparing for any battle.”

The groaner does a complete 180 of emotions, letting out a triumphant shout and jumping up. “I’m going to help prepare more,” they announce. “Sorry for calling you a cop.”

“I don’t know what that word means.”

“Well, you aren’t one.” Dahyun follows the student to the kitchen to help. Tzuyu, because the meeting is officially over in any official capacity, slides down on the bench next to Chaeyoung and sighs. Chaeyoung slides a mug of now lukewarm hot chocolate over to her, one they had reserved for her but forgotten to give.

“Hot chocolate is still good cold,” Chaeyoung remarks. “Because this is kind of just vaguely milky chocolate.”

Tzuyu nods. “The best kind.”

* * *

Nayeon wants to crumple the paper up, throw it into a fire—no, the ocean, then electrocute the ocean, successfully destroying the paper and likely herself from the ensuing explosion. Thankfully Nayeon left her book in the classroom today, had to return after dinner to pick it up, or else someone else might have made it to her desk first, found the mostly completed sheet to designate a house transfer. Perfectly placed. Professor Hanneman’s masterful devices.

He left the name off her sheet, a small mercy, save her from an earlier demise at the mere possibility she would switch houses. But there, plain as day, switching from Black Eagles to Blue Lions, something about an interest in the areas of focus the Blue Lions have compared to her present house is written in the section that asks for explanation, something the administration files away in a folder that means nothing because initial house assignments are always based on where you come from, not what you want to study, but something they probably keep track of to keep track of, because bureaucracy demands a certain amount of useless information like that.

Nayeon folds it, carefully, a few times, trying to make it as small as possible, trying to figure out how to properly dispose of it so that nobody else sees it. She can light it on fire, at some point, but not right now, not in the middle of the classroom, because her brain is running a mile a minute and even the ashes are somehow too much proof. Jihyo will learn how to reverse engineer them and will then, somehow, find her fingerprint on the paper, somewhere, and declare her an enemy of the state, of the country, of their friendship, and that’ll be done with it. If Professor Hanneman would just  _ listen _ when she said she wasn’t interested in switching houses, none of this would have to happen. Because she wasn’t interested. She was content where she was, thank you very much.

“Nayeon?” The paper, securely folded and now a much more concentrated weight than it was unfolded, goes flying into the corner of the room, as Nayeon turns to fix Jihyo, standing in the entrance to the classroom, with a very convincingly not-guilty smile.

“What are you doing here?” Nayeon asks, and she decides she should be an actress. She’s killing it. Jihyo doesn’t suspect a thing.

“What are you doing here?” Jihyo asks back, squinting at Nayeon over the light from her candle. It’s just past twilight now, the room is barely illuminated by the near nighttime light of the sky.

“Picking up a textbook!” Nayeon announces, and then fumbles with the table for a second before picking the book up, showing it to Jihyo in case she didn’t fully believe her.

“Manuela asked me to get something up for her,” Jihyo says, moving into the classroom and grabbing something from the front desk.

“I didn’t know you got back.”

“I got dragged into a strategy meeting for the mock battle,” Jihyo says. “And then I spent the rest of the day in the training grounds.” Guilty, like she wasn’t supposed to.

“With regular breaks for food, right?” Jihyo just clears her throat. “Well, we ought to go now, then.” Nayeon loops her arms with Jihyo, steers them towards the door, to get her out of the classroom as soon as possible.

“Right.” Jihyo lets herself be led. “I heard a student was M.I.A. for a little while, but I couldn’t get anymore details.”

Nayeon groans. “An absolute mess! And you know what? They asked Jeong to organize some of our house to help. Not me, and I’m older!”

* * *

“This doesn’t matter,” Mina says, and Momo isn’t sure it’s what any of them wanted to hear, but then, Mina doesn’t exactly look like she wants to be standing in front of them, giving a pep talk. “The mock battle isn’t the Battle of Eagle and Lion. It’s just to see your abilities and give you a feel for real combat.” Mina pauses, and for a moment Momo thinks that’s all she’s going to say on the matter. “There’s no reason to push yourself,” Mina says, quieter. “Tap out when you feel you’ve done enough, or you’re tired. There is no valor in hurting yourself on a mock battlefield.”

Someone behind Momo whispers harshly to their friend. “Spoiled princess lecturing us on not hurting ourselves. That’s rich.”

“Bet you she’s never seen a day of combat in her life,” the friend jeers back.

“Never seen a day of hard work at all.” Momo wants to turn around and say something. Tell them to shut up. She doesn’t.

“That’s all,” Mina says, and Hanneman takes her spot in front of them, to explain the rules of the mock battle. How to surrender if you’ve been hurt too much, how to flag for help if you get hurt and can’t remove yourself from the battlefield on your own.

Momo watches Mina, standing next to Sana, ramrod straight, listening to Hanneman. It’s a half baked idea, their strategy, one Momo is pretty sure Mina made up on the spot when she’d finally cornered her about it. Indignant that Momo suggested she was shirking responsibility in favor of holing up in her room and knitting, or whatever she had been doing in there. Mina looks, for a moment, standing like that, as if the plan was, well, planned. Like this was some grand scheme of hers.

Sana looks over at Momo, winks at her, and grins. Hanneman, content he’d overexplained the rules of the mock battle well enough, dismisses them.

* * *

“This is only the mock battle,” Jihyo says. “But victory must be absolute. We are representing the Adrestian Empire at Garreg Mach.”

“Are you going to pout for the whole battle,” Jeongyeon asks. Jihyo’s speech is prewritten, meticulously practiced and memorized. Jeongyeon’s heard it about fifty times, she’s sure.

“I’m not pouting,” Nayeon says, pouting.

“Your face is just naturally that ugly.” Nayeon says nothing. “What was she supposed to do? You’re the only person studying magic in the house, and we’re supposed to use the mock battle as an ability benchmark for  _ everyone _ . You decimating the Golden Deer with wind magic would skew everyone else’s results.”

“She could have consulted me.”

Jeongyeon hums. “Adrestian Emperor consults every soldier in the army to make sure formations are curated specifically to what they want to do.”

“Am I just the same as any other soldier?”

Jeongyeon lets out a long, slow breath of air. More of a hiss. “I walked into that. That’s my fault.”

“You helped plan this,” Nayeon says. “This  _ is _ your fault.”

“You’re good with a sword.” Jeongyeon says. “Plus, you’re leading the front against the Blue Lions  _ because _ of your magic skill. You’ll be able to anticipate their attacks better.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll get over this,” Jeongyeon says.

“See if I do.”

* * *

“Pep talk,” the professor had said simply, gesturing to the mess of Golden Deer that had congregated in front of them.

Tzuyu clears her throat, awkward in front of the mass of eyes trained intently on her.

“We should win,” she starts, and someone cheers from the back. “Let’s do our best.” She pauses. “I know our strategy is contingent on chaos, and that can be a little stressful, up against the formation of the other two houses. But trust your groupmates, be prepared to improvise, and don’t be afraid to call for help. The professor’s group will be roaming moreso than engaging, and if things are getting a little hairy they can come and help you.” Tzuyu looks to the professor.

“Let’s kick ass,” the professor says.

“Let’s kick ass,” Tzuyu repeats.

“Fear the deer!” Someone from the back shouts. The pep talk breaks. The mock battle begins.

* * *

Nayeon’s never been one for thick armor, much to Jeongyeon’s chagrin. It doesn’t lend itself well to the use of magic, or the use of anything other than a simple hack and slash for swords, so Nayeon doesn’t bother with it. Better to have less armor and not let the enemy get anywhere near her. Plus, some Faerghan philosopher has already extolled hours of pointless commentary on the importance of the connection to nature and magical strength, of which armor is not natural, given it is part of the military industrial complex, and thus weakens the already tenuous connection human beings have with nature, given what Aillel is probably singlehandedly doing to the environment. Even though that’s Sothis’ fault, not humans, and they shouldn’t get divine punishment for that. She isn’t sure how the philosopher worked his way around that concept, but he did. Armor+magic=bad. It’s just pure geometry.

Light armor just works better. A shoulder plate, chain mail, a thin breastplate, and a vambrace for each arm. Armor does more harm than good against magic, and magic armor, while useful, can have averse effects on the body.

The Blue Lions are defensively oriented. There’s a small group of Golden Deer scouting along the outskirts, not engaging. Nayeon watches them. The Golden Deer always have the strangest plans.

“What do we do?” Someone asks.

“Follow the plan,” Nayeon says, even though she’s pretty sure they’re just walking into their demise. Death even, if not for the fact a handful of the Knights of Seiros are patrolling the sides of the area designated for the mock battle, to make sure they don’t get too hurt. “Get ready,” Nayeon shouts, grabbing the attention of the fifteen or so students she’s in charge of, standing in an offensive formation. The Blue Lions can see them. It’s not a secret. Straightforward maneuvers. Overwhelm. That’s the general M.O. “Charge!”

The plan. For Nayeon to lead somewhere between a third and half the house against the Blue Lions, equipped with a sword (“and no magic,” Jihyo had said, Nayeon tried to argue. She should face the Golden Deer front, and use magic, and they’d probably crush them easily. It fell on deaf ears).

Magic is difficult to go up against, if you’re unprepared. Uninitiated. The wielder has much more control over it than an archer. Can hit you from a distance or up close with ease. But attacks at a range have a limit. Like an arrow, unable to arc path once fired.

Still, despite Nayeon’s primer on how to handle magical attacks, they’re going to get destroyed. Annihilated. Completely obliterated. There’s a small flank of students wearing armor, carrying large shields and melee weapons, that form a guard around the majority of the Blue Lions. Mostly magic users. They begin their assault before the Black Eagles can get close enough to engage. 

Battle happens in two disparate parts: waiting, and then pandemonium.

It goes about as well as Nayeon predicted it would. There's fire all around her smoke filling the sky as just about everything even remotely flammable begins to catch fire, and students are dropping like flies. One gets hit by a fireball pretty square in the chest, and Nayeon winces. Even though it's just practice, and nobody is hitting with enough power to kill, it's going to hurt like a bitch. He taps out, because he can barely stand up straight. Nayeon doesn't blame him. Another student pretty successfully dodges a bolt of thunder that zips past her. Taps out too, because she doesn't want to be here, in battle. Announces it loudly.

That's how the battle goes, or something like that, on the Black Eagles side of things. Nayeon wonders how the Golden Deer front is doing, exactly what they're planning and how Jeongyeon handles it. She dodges a ball of fire magic.

This is easy for Nayeon, because she's used to magic attacks, their limits and their uses, and she's developed a pretty high resistance to them. Byproduct of the trial and error of learning to form your own fireballs and lightning strikes. 

The few Blue Lions who don't use magic break rank to charge the remaining Black Eagles. They're easy to disarm and defeat, but the numbers are bad. It’s something like a three to one ratio for Black Eagles to Blue Lions falling, and Nayeon’s sure they're beat. Half the Black Eagle student body against the entire Blue Lions one. It doesn't work.

* * *

Jeongyeon fares better. The Golden Deer strategy is disconcerting, to say the least, but not unanticipated. Leave it to the Golden Deer to disregard any strategy they've learned so far to try and confuse them. She isn't even sure they have a cohesive strategy, since she watches two small groups of Golden Deer students almost start fighting each other before two of them recognize each other and go in for a hug, instead.

There's no center to it. Jeongyeon can see Tzuyu leading a small brigade of her own, as well as their professor--a former mercenary. Maybe this is where they got the strategy. It makes it harder to hit them where it hurts and break ranks. It's clever.

But if they thought pandemonium would cause the Black Eagles to break ranks and fall apart, they had severely underestimated their training, and also their ability to anticipate this sort of strategy from them, or anyone. They shift formation, long enough for two the Golden Deer brigades to misunderstand and storm them. Thinking they had broke ranks. They’re taken downtaken out pretty easily, and the Black Eagles shift formation. Three slightly smaller groups to take on the even smaller Golden Deer brigades. 

Jeongyeon is going after Tzuyu, because that was the plan. Nayeon and Jeongyeon, appointed generals of the two fronts of the army, would go after the house leaders, and then the house professors, if they could. Presumably right now Nayeon was duking it out with Myoui Mina as well. Assuming she'd stopped pouting. 

Tzuyu keeps her distance, because they're both on horseback, and Jeongyeon would win pretty handedly in close combat. It's smart, because at a distance Tzuyu can only see Jeongyeon’s spear. Jeongyeon pierces the spear into the ground, spurs her horse on to get closer to Tzuyu. Pulls the bow over her back and grabs an arrow from the quiver at her side. 

It's a quick action, pulling back the bowstring, aiming, firing. Tzuyu doesn't see it coming, couldn't see it coming, and besides, Jeongyeon is too used to firing on horseback. The arrow pierces her shoulder, and she goes down and doesn't get up. 

It is then, amidst the glory of Jeongyeon’s victory, that the Blue Lions side of the battle completely lights up in an inferno.   


* * *

Stupid decisions made against the backdrop of battle are precisely just that. Stupid decisions made against the backdrop of battle. Brilliant decisions made during the backdrop of battle are stupid decisions that happened to work out, and Nayeon prays to the Goddess that she's making the latter.

Using magic certainly wasn't part of the plan, the plan was to win the way Jihyo told her to and then pout about it for a while, but the Blue Lions are destroying them. Nayeon understands the whole "wanting to see everyone's ability" thing, but shouldn't winning be part of it too? There's a whole prize for winning, or something (she wasn't paying attention). 

And the Blue Lions are merciless to boot. Knights patrol the sides of the battlefield, carrying banners and strong charms that protect them from most magical attacks a student would know, and they pull students when things become too much for them, but still. Nayeon's the only one who seems capable of dodging the constant barrage of thunder and fire. 

Nayeon uses magic first to deflect. Wind can redirect most fire attacks, at least to some extent. It gives Yerim a chance to actually use some of those lance techniques they'd been learning. She barrels into the front lines of the Blue Lions, taking a boy down. It's one swift strike and the boy is out.

Yerim's glory is short-lived. A bolt of lightning hits her pretty square in the chest as she tries to keep her balance. She falls. 

What Nayeon does next is, roughly, a very non-calculated risk. Chucking a ball of fire into the center of the Blue Lions small defensive box is easy. Using wind magic to turn the small fire into a raging fire tornado, far less easy. Potentially not possible, and certainly not something Professor Hanneman, or any professor at Garreg Mach, had ever discussed (or probably was allowed to discuss). The effect was instant, and exactly what Nayeon was looking for. The Blue Lions constant and brutal assault was, roughly, completely destroyed. 

The things Nayeon notices most are how bright the flames are, how quickly one can change the tides of battle, and how loudly one of the Knights of Seiros swore when he saw what was happening.

Park Jihyo, far away, guarding the Black Eagle base from the Golden Deer, also swore when she saw what was happening. Unlike the rest of the student body located away from the Blue Lions base, unsure what was happening and assuming it was a coordinated Blue Lions strategy, Jihyo could immediately pick out exactly what was going on. The dramatic flare of a fire tornado was unmistakable. Didn't seem like something Mina would do. But that is for other days, other times.

There's a small collection of students trying to use their small repository of ice magic to put out the tornado, or mitigate it, or something, but ice magic is hard to learn, even harder to master and make powerful. A larger group is running, a situation the few remaining Black Eagles are taking advantage of, picking them off while they[re distracted. Still a small section are also standing on the outskirts of the heat zone, just kind of staring at the fire, somewhere between dazed and impressed and confused. Did they do this?

Nayeon takes advantage of this. Another gust of wind and the tornado breaks, and fire spews everywhere. Someone finally realizes it's her causing this, even as everything breaks to chaos, and shoots a bolt of lightning at Nayeon that she dodges, barely in time. Nayeon shoots back, wind barely grazing their cheek, moving out of the way. 

A lance nearly stabs Nayeon square in the gut. It's Momo, who looks pretty beat up, but still kicking. "Holy shit!" Momo shouts, like they aren't fighting. Like they're just two travelers who happened upon this awe inspiring fire tornado at the same time, both taken aback by its beauty. She lunges again, and Nayeon remembers her sword. Hits it against part of the upper shaft. Knocks it away. 

Against one of them, either Momo or the mage, Nayeon would fare fine. It's the double team that’s an issue, although Momo's movements are sluggish, and the mage can't seem to see as well with the smoke from the fire. Even sluggish, though, Momo is faster than Nayeon. Her axe packs a more powerful blow. 

Magic at such a close range isn’t ideal, especially as close as Momo stays to Nayeon. She gives her no breathing room, using overwhelming as her main tactic. Nayeon focuses on the heat bubbling up in her hands. Takes the risk. Fires straight into Momo's chest. Momo stumbles back a few steps, shouts out something far to laudatory for a defeating blow, and lets out a wheezing cough. The edge of Nayeon's sleeves are singed by the blast. Momo taps out. She lets out a sigh of relief.

Ice magic, like the element that it is, feels like sharp, cold pain. It pinpoints exactly one spot where the attack first touches the skin and then blooms outward like frost on a windowpane. Of all the things ice magic is or isn’t, it is the least pleasant to be hit with. Whoever hits Nayeon was outside her field of vision, obscured enough as it is with the smoke and fire and her mind too frazzled to look and properly survey her surroundings. She’d completely forgotten about the mage. 

Nayeon grabs her side, hisses, wishing that it numbed skin like she always thought it did as a kid, before another attack hits her. She falls to her knees now, frantically looking for her assailant. It's Mina, face painted in oranges from the fire, standing less than five feet away. Her nose is bleeding, and looks like it might be crooked. Sana is slung over her shoulder, unconscious. Nayeon isn’t sure which of them was the mage from earlier tag teaming her with Momo. Probably Sana. Mina takes a stumbling step forward, limping, raises her hand, and fires one last blast into Nayeon's stomach. She falls down, unconscious.

* * *

It’s Mina who, after the battle, slings one of Nayeon’s arms over her shoulder, lifts her up so she’s standing, sort of, hobbling along, leaning against Mina, being led back to healing camp set up, the carriages that are supposed to take the worst hurt students back to the monastery to heal up in beds in the infirmary. “Well done,” she says, quietly, and Nayeon grunts, coughs once, and they stop, because Mina isn’t sure if she’s going to throw up, or spit, or pass out.

“I can barely see.” Nayeon does none of those things, just stares off at a bush that looks like a green blob. “You really did a number on me.”

“You nearly destroyed all of us,” Mina says, when Nayeon finally gives her the nod that they can start walking again. “Increasing the blast zone of fire magic using the wind is really smart. I,” she pauses. “Well, truthfully, I’d never thought of that.”

“I wasn’t sure it would work,” Nayeon says.

“It was really clever,” Mina says, and Nayeon mumbles something akin to thanks before they continue on in silence, Nayeon hobbling along, Mina doing her best to support her.

Jihyo and Jeongyeon find them when they finally make it back to the tents, buzzing equal levels of excitement, concern, and frustration.

“We did it!” Jeongyeon announces, and she looks best between the two of them, still completely covered in her armor, holding her helmet at her side. The chestplate is dented, and she’s somehow completely lost the spaulder for her right shoulder, but otherwise. She doesn’t seem to be bleeding, although bruising, probably.

“That wasn’t the plan!” Jihyo says, angry. Her left arm has already been pulled into a sling and it jostles around when she moves, like she isn’t sure what to do about the state it’s in. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”

“I’m sorry,” Nayeon mumbles, and Jihyo gestures Mina out of the way, shifting herself to Nayeon’s side and supporting her.

“Does it matter? You won,” Mina says. Jihyo frowns at her.

“We need to get you to Manuela,” Jeongyeon says.

“My eyes don’t work,” Nayeon replies.

“That’s normal after getting hit by magic,” Mina supplies, trying to help.

“I’m a blind oracle now!” Nayeon announces, and Jeongyeon laughs, of all things. Looks worried, but laughs, and pulls off her gauntlets, as much of her upper body armor as she can, tosses it haphazardly anywhere, and supports Nayeon’s other side.

“What do you command, oh great oracle?” Jeongyeon asks.

“Cake!” They do not seem set on what an oracle is.

Jihyo glances back at her, looks her up and down once before remarking, offhandedly, “you look well.” Mina opens her mouth, thinks of protesting, changes her mind, closes it again. Turns away from the trio walking off, decides to find her house.

She finds Momo first, talking to some of the Golden Deer, sitting on a large rock. She’s taken her armor off, rolling the sleeve of her undershirt up to reveal a burn. Carnage from Nayeon’s improvisation.

“It’ll heal,” Momo is saying to an awed Chaeyoung, who only saw the attack from a distance, wasn’t close enough. “But I’m thinking if I ever _ do _ have to get scarred, a scar from a magic attack would be the coolest.”

“I’ve never seen magic before,” Chaeyoung says. She’s got a red stain on her shirt, by her shoulder. It says enough. “I think I’m glad I got to stay away from it. That fire vortex was scary from far away.”

“It almost turned my armor into an oven,” Dahyun groans. “I heard you get scars from using magic.”

“You can,” Mina says, and Dahyun and Chaeyoung jump. Didn’t notice her.

“There you are,” Momo says, and grins at her. “Sana was looking for you.”

“If you overextend yourself too much,” Mina says to the two Golden Deer. “Or other things, like if you don’t eat enough or don’t focus.”

“Oh.”

“Basically, if you’re not smart, you get hurt,” Momo says.

“Oh, so I’m not smart?” Mina asks, and the way she smirks at Momo is teasing, and Momo seems taken aback by it for just a moment. Mina rolls her right sleeve back, just slightly, and shows the underside of her hand. A scar runs along it, starting from the tip of her ring finger down to her palm, where it blooms into something intricate.

“Woah.”

“That’s a magic scar?” Dahyun asks. “How did it happen?”

Mina blinks, like she didn’t expect the question. “When I was a kid,” she says. “I froze a lake. Went on a fishing trip with my brother. He wouldn’t talk to me.”

“So, you decided to try and freeze a lake?”

“I  _ did _ freeze a lake. Whole thing. You could walk on it.”

“And did that to your hand,” Momo points out.

“Can I touch it?” Chaeyoung asks, and Mina frowns, because it’s just a hand, and a scar on a hand, but moves it closer to Chaeyoung, who grabs it gently between two fingers and starts tracing the pattern it makes. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s just a scar,” Mina says. “it does when it happens. Like being stabbed with icicles.”

“If you get a scar, it has to be like this,” Chaeyoung says, turning to Momo. “This is sick as hell. I bet it’d look different if it was fire magic.”

Someone jostles into Mina, overexcited and running, turns to offer a halfhearted apology over his shoulder before freezing, realizing who he bumped into and turning to offer instead a full bow of an apology with an accompanying “my sincere apologies, your highness.” Chaeyoung’s hand jerks away, immediately, their social class taking precedence over their conversation. Mina wants to protest, that it was a mistake, that it didn’t hurt her, and that that sort of professionality didn’t need to be afforded her, only her brother. But she says nothing. Words freeze where they form.

“Tzuyu woke up!” the boy announces, to Chaeyoung and Dahyun, before darting off.

“She was knocked unconscious,” Chaeyoung supplies. “We should go check on her.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Dahyun says. “Whoever lit that fire vortex must have a nasty scar on their hand now. Absolutely nasty.” Mina thinks back to Nayeon, slinging an arm over her shoulder, her hands dirty but unscarred.

“Crazy the Black Eagles pulled it off,” Momo says, because it’s just the two of them now. 

Mina hums. “They weren’t supposed to.”

“Your devious master plan fell through, then?”

“No,” Mina says. “Theirs.”

“Right,” Momo trails off.

“You should go find Sana,” Mina says, because silence is excruciating, and Momo doesn’t want to be there. Just stands there out of politeness, on principle. Because Mina is who she is, or whatever. “So she can look at the burn.”

“You as well,” Momo says, standing up and stretching. 

“I’m fine.”

“She’ll want to fawn over you regardless, you know that.”

“I’ll find her later,” Mina says, and takes a spot sitting on the rock Momo had been before. Momo looks at her, like she doesn’t believe Mina, because they both know she doesn’t mean it, she won’t find Sana, she’ll hide in her room until Sana smokes her out, or breaks in, or some third option they haven’t thought of yet. 

But Momo just nods, says nothing about it. “I’ll see you at the monastery, then,” she says. And leaves Mina, sitting alone on the rock, feeling her nose with her fingers to make sure the elixir didn’t heal it weird. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The three houses in 3h all have a different area of focus. Beagles is magic users, golden deer r bow users, and the blions are romanticizing knighthood. I kinda played on them in this story but shifting them around between the houses. anyway MEDIEVAL PAPER IS SO COOL!!!!!!! I’m time travelling back to the middle ages where I will immediately die from a disease presently eradicated but the few days I spend there staring starry eyed at a concerned Geoffrey Chaucer as I recite the opening lines to an as-yet unwritten poem of his will be the greatest moments of my life.
> 
> i'm over at @snowsets on twitter if u wanna talk tho...abt anything...i will exclusively be on my fire emblem bullshit tomorrow tho i'm playing cindered shadows w a friend (finally). you can also feel free to hold me to like, idk, actually writing in a timely manner or something :]


End file.
